Long time without writing, but I've been reading
many times a day, while I was supposed to be writing
a boring business document.

WorkGot it done (sort of - out of my way,
anyway), on Friday. One of the bosses of the company came to
me today and said I'd done a good job, and sort of
apologised for dumping it on me, when I had no idea about
the business or anything. shrug - I did tell them in my
interview that I had no interest in business, or in writing
business specs.... They are good guys for the most part,
though.

So now I'm coding.... or trying to. I've never felt
overwhelmed by any programming problem before, but this job
is ominous. Lets review, for those who haven't been
following:

I'm modifying a Java/Servlet/JSP/Sybase application to talk
to a COM/MTS middleware layer, which passes calls to some
weird-as-shit back end thing, which is written in C++, but
seems more like a COBOL system than anything.

Now, I don't know Java, haven't done C++ for nearly 3 years,
and have no idea about COBOL........ The things I get myself
into! I managed to find a bug in JDK1.3 for Windows,
too.

FamilyMost of my family is
in Jerusalem at the moment. Not really the worlds best
choice of location, if you ask me.

Free
I can't stand the way free software people complain about MS
FUD, and then go and claim stupid, wrong things like that
Mozilla/K-Meleon start up time on Windows is good, but IE
has a big advantage becuase it preloads or some crap!
I'd like to point out that this arguement only holds water
if Active Desktop is on - apart from that it is pure FUD.
Please, please get your facts straight.

A copy of Andover's Open Magazine (the dead tree version)
arrived today. Not too bad, but nothing special. A lot of it
had nothing to do with open anything, though. Weird.

Music
I haven't got Kid A yet, but I've been listening to
OK Computer a lot. Finally got around to getting U2's
Actung
Baby, to nearly complete my U2 collection. I remember
when
it came out, I didn't like it, but if I listen to it now
(nine (!!!!) years later) I can't believe how fresh it
sounds. Also Powderfinger's Odyssey Number Five - an
outstanding album - maybe the best Australian album since...
I don't know - for a long time anyway.